Prediction of overall atmospheric MTF with standard weather parameters: Comparison with measurements with two imaging systems

Overall atmospheric modulation transfer function (MiT) is essentially the product of turbulence and aerosol MTF. Models describing meteorological dependences of both C_n² and coarse aerosol size distribution have been developed previously. Here, they are used to predict turbulence MiT, aerosol MTF, and overall atmospheric MTF according to weather. Comparison of predictions to measurements yields very high correlations and suggests that such prediction models can also be very useful in image restoration based on weather data at the time and general location in which the image was recorded. An interesting aspect of this work is that measurements of aerosol MTF with different imaging instrumentation are very different, as expected from theory developed previously concerning the practical aerosol MTF actually recorded in the image. This is dependent upon instrumentation parameters. This experimental verification supports the model that the "practical" aerosol MiT is very dependent upon instrumentation.